Who invented the peephole and why?

We got used to some things and stopped noticing, for example, a door peephole.

Who is the “dad” of the door peephole?

What is this in a few words? This is a hole in the door leaf to monitor the situation outside the house, it allows you to choose who will open the door and who not. The main role of a door peephole is for personal safety and protection from criminals.

Since childhood, we have all been taught to only let people we know in after carefully looking through the peephole!

The first mentions of prototypes can be found in gloomy descriptions of prisons dating back centuries. Previously, small holes were made in the cell doors, covered with a metal lid or bars, to monitor the “ward” prisoners. This way it was possible to safely monitor the behavior of prisoners and prevent trouble in time. Based on this fact, I can assume that either the head of the prison or one of the guards came up with the peephole; the name of the inventor has not reached our times, leaving room for imagination.

Of the more modern prototypes, we can cite as an example a mailbox from the times of the USSR, which was located on the inside of the front door. Postmen put letters into a narrow slot with a hinged lid, behind which there was a box, so it was impossible to see anything! But it happened that there was no box behind the slot, the correspondence fell straight to the floor - and through such an improvised window one could see who was behind the door.The plug could be pushed away from the outside with a pencil or finger, so intruders could look into the apartment. Unfortunately, history also did not preserve the name of the author of such boxes.

There were several other interesting inventions: a magnifying glass filled with water, a mirror, a design somewhat reminiscent of binoculars, and other variations. But they all had a significant drawback - a small viewing angle.

American inventor Robert Williams Wood presented to the public a special design of a lens, which we now know as a “fish eye”; it made it possible to discreetly see the guest behind the threshold in full height. The invention gathered dust on a shelf until the 60s of the 20th century, until manufacturers of camera lenses remembered about it, and then companies producing door fittings paid attention to it.

Wood's invention, among other things, gave impetus to the development of the art of photography.

In what year and why was the door peephole invented?

The modern design has a standard set of parts:

• eyepiece;
• frame;
• lenses;
• lens;
• movable flap.

The number of lenses varies from 2 to 15 pieces depending on the thickness of the door leaf and the requirements for image quality.

Economical options include plastic lenses; they quickly lose transparency, but have a good margin of safety in relation to mechanical stress and temperature changes.

The current version, familiar to us from childhood, gained recognition only in the 1960s, although Robert Wood created it back in 1906.

Now stores offer a wide range of models that differ in shape, size and even set of functions! Thanks to Voodoo, we only need one glance to determine the identity of the guest standing outside the threshold of our shelter, whereas previously we had to risk our own safety.